2015-16

It's a Wonderful Night for Oscar! Oscar, Oscar! Who Will Win?

It’s been a disappointing season. Full stop.

True, while a number of 2015’s cinematic treasures seem primed to collect some hardware Sunday night (Inside Out, Mad Max: Fury Road, Son of Saul, Spotlight, Room, Creed and Amy can probably bank on at least one win apiece), the top categories still look set to be dominated by a pair of movies that left me bothered and bewildered, but not bewitched. More like overwhelmed with annoyance.

So take this year’s predictions with a grain of salt. Particularly Best Picture, where my level of indifference has liberated me to play faster and looser with my forecasting than I would normally deign to do.

Best Picture ❌

Will win: The Big Short

Could win: The Revenant is where the smart money lies. Only predict The Big Short if you want to look like the genius in the room in the event of an upset (I guess that says a lot about me). The far more refined and deserving Spotlight is likely running a close 3rd.

Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should be nominated: Inside Out

Best Director ✅

Will win: Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant [He’ll join John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz as the only people to win Best Director two years in a row.]

Could win: Adam McKay, The Big Short

Should win: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

Should be nominated: Todd Haynes, Carol

Best Actor ✅

Will win: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Could win: No one’s wrestling it away from this bear. But if you wanna speculate on who’s finishing 2nd... Bryan Cranston?

Should win: Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

Should be nominated: Leo’s co-star and screen nemesis Tom Hardy should be going head-to-head with him on Oscar night too, but for his far more interesting and technically accomplished performance as twin gangsters in Legend.

Best Actress ✅

Will/Should win: Brie Larson, Room

Could win: Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Should be nominated: Rooney Mara, Carol [slyly smuggled into Best Supporting Actress by the wicked Harvey Weinstein]

Best Supporting Actor ❌

Will/Should win: Sylvester Stallone, Creed [Yeah, I’m in Rocky’s corner. Sue me.]

Could win: Any of the field. This category’s more wide open than it appears. If I had to pick one... Mark Rylance.

Should be nominated: Benicio Del Toro, Sicario

Best Supporting Actress ✅

Will win: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl [for her impressive leading performance]

Could/Should win: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs [For the record, Rooney Mara gives what is by far the most sensitive, nuanced, beautiful performance in the group. But, like Vikander, she has the unfair advantage of a leading role fraudulently campaigned as “supporting”.]

Should be nominated: Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina

Best Original Screenplay ✅

Will/Should win: Spotlight

Could win: No one. This is a lock. Bridge of Spies is probably the distant runner-up.

Should be nominated: Son of Saul

Best Adapted Screenplay ✅

Will win: The Big Short

Could win: Room and The Martian have their fans, but again, this is a lock.

Should win: Carol

Should be nominated: Steve Jobs

Best Animated Feature ✅

Will/Should win: Inside Out

Could win: Don’t make me laugh. I can’t even begin to guess who might be in 2nd place.

Should be nominated: The Peanuts Movie

Best Foreign Language Film ✅

Will/Should win: Son of Saul

Could win: Mustang is a very real upset possibility.

Best Documentary Feature ✅

Will win: Amy

Could win: Feels like an easy call, but don’t underestimate Cartel Land or What Happened, Miss Simone?.

Should win: The Look of Silence

Should be nominated: Listen to Me Marlon

Best Cinematography ✅

Will win: The Revenant [an historic third in a row for Chivo]

Could win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: Carol

Should be nominated: Son of Saul

Best Editing ✅

Will/Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Could win: The Big Short (ugh) is neck-in-neck with Mad Max. I really don’t wanna be wrong about this one.

Should be nominated: The Martian

Best Production Design ✅

Will/Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Could win: I can’t tell you how tempted I am to call Vegas and put money on Bridge of Spies, the upset possibility no one seems to be talking about.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY IS THIS NOT NOMINATED???: Crimson Peak

Best Costume Design ✅

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Could win: This is THE contest of the night. A legit five-horse race, and among five uniquely deserving movies, to boot.

Should win: Cinderella or Carol [Sandy Powell did both of them, and she deserves it this year for her range of character-defining colour and shape.]

Should be nominated: Brooklyn

Best Original Score ✅

Will win: The Hateful Eight [Gonna by stoked for Morricone]

Could win: Bridge of Spies

Should win: Sicario

Should be nominated: Inside Out

Best Original Song ❌

Will win: “Til It Happens To You”, The Hunting Ground

Could win: “Writing’s On The Wall”, Spectre

Should Win: “Earned It”, Fifty Shades of Grey

Should be nominated: “I’ll See You In My Dreams”, I’ll See You in My Dreams [But honestly, it’s a wasteland out there. Not a good year for movie songs.]

Best Sound Mixing ❌

Will win: The Revenant

Could win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: The Martian

Should be nominated: Love & Mercy

Best Sound Editing ❌

Will win: The Revenant

Could/Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should be nominated: Everest

Best Visual Effects ❌

Will/Should win: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Could win: Any of them but Ex Machina (shame). I’d especially look to The Martian as a potential spoiler.

Should be nominated: The Walk [Best effects of the year, sadly overlooked.]

Best Makeup & Hairstyling ✅

Will/Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Could win: The Revenant [Toss a coin.]

Should be nominated: Mr. Holmes

Best Live-Action Short Film ✅

Will/Should win: Stutterer

Could win: Shok is the smart bet, but it’s impossible to handicap these categories.

Best Animated Short Film ❌

Will win: Sanjay’s Super Team

Could win: Any of them but Prologue

Should win: World of Tomorrow [Seriously, stream this. It’s brilliant, and if it wins it’ll have made the whole Revenant v. Big Short horror show worthwhile.]

Should be nominated: If I Were a God

[Did win]: Bear Story

Best Documentary, Short Subjects ❌

Will win: Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah

Could win: Chau, beyond the lines is my guess, but any of them really.

Should win: Last Day of Freedom

Should be nominated: My Enemy, My Brother

[Did win]: A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

Post-Oscars Analysis

Final score: 16/24. Below average (my poorest showing since 2011), but could have been even worse. I was steeling myself for a major face-plant this year, and with so much divergence among the major guilds.

But I can hardly complain about such poor fortune when it's delivered in the form of Spotlight's nail-biting triumph in Best Picture, its refinement and intelligence ultimately besting the ostentatious hollowness of The Revenant and the misjudged gimmickry of The Big Short. For much of the season (ever since the PGA) I had never felt so disengaged in the outcome of the Academy's top category, but now I can't recall ever being this excited by it.

The only acting category I got wrong (and was crushed to get wrong because I could smell it coming a month off) was Best Supporting Actor, in which Sylvester Stallone was overtaken by the Mark Rylance's eleventh hour BAFTA momentum. This one stings, guys. Not gonna lie. Sly deserved it this year, and you know he's never getting a chance like that again. But you take the bitter with the better.

If anyone in the field had to pip him, I'm glad it's Rylance, a very fine thespian who gave a very fine performance in a very fine movie.

The only shocker of the evening (a word that gets thrown around too often; True shockers only occur once every few years, but this is one of them) was Ex Machina in Best Visual Effects. My jaw is still on the floor over this one. This was not even considered within the realm of possibility. Some have floated the theory that effects house politics are in play, but we know the Academy at large doesn't vote that way. My only hypothesis is that support was just spread too thin among three Best Picture nominees and the new highest grossing film of all time. Whatever voting mechanics allowed it to be, this is a landmark success for subtle, supporting effects.

That leaves us with the music categories, which were a tale of two reactions for me personally; One my least favourite result of the evening, the other by far the most satisfying, both crammed within mere minutes of each other. So the less said about Sam Smith's “The Writing's on the Wall”, the better. Instead, I'll end on the insurmountable high point of the night, when Ennio Morricone, thankfully still a living legend, took home his first competitive Oscar at 87 years young. The Writing won't stain the Wall forever, but the sight of Maestro Morricone holding that statue, in front of thousands on their feet, will vividly endure.

The show opened with the obligatory stirring montage of the year in film.

I counted no less than sixteen films that received zero nominations, with multiple shots of 2015's highest grossing non-nominees Jurassic World, Age of Ultron and Minions (but no screen time for Anomalisa, Boy and the World or When Marnie Was There -- shocking). Were they trying to dupe the casual viewer into sticking around past Chris Rock's opening monologue?

He got of to a rocky start (seriously not intending a pun there) with an obvious “White People's Choice Awards” joke, but things picked up from there. “How come it's only unemployed people who tell you you should quit something?” he quipped in reference to calls that he boycott, before setting up the night's one decent running gag by adding, “And the last thing I need is to lose another job to Kevin Hart.”

Most critics agree – and I'll cop to it as well – that Rock crushed his opening set. At least as a performer.

The chinks in his comedy armour – chiefly the reduction of Oscar's diversity issue to a strictly black actors issue – may have revealed themselves early, but you need to have flawless timing and stage charisma to spare in order to land such sweat-curdling jokes. His incendiary contrasting of 1960s civil rights strife and the esoterica of Hollywood awards shows was simultaneously problematic (Black folks still do have “real things to protest”) and yet audaciously insightful, putting two year's worth of social media outrage towards the Oscars into harsh perspective.

His call for opportunities was inspired, and his description of Hollywood as “sorority racist” was so on point that it merited more of an knowing nod than a laugh (and could be partly responsible for his diminishing returns after that point).

The picture editors were clearly having a tough time finding cutaways to people in the audience, no doubt unsure about laughing at Rock's blistering truth-bombing. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall at the Dolby! That must have been the most uncomfortable Oscar crowd since Rob Lowe cut a rug with Snow White.

Rock later introduced the night's most successful side sketch, a reel of movie parodies with black actors replacing key roles, including Leslie Jones as Judy the bear from The Revenant and Tracey Morgan as Lili “these danishes is good, guuurl” Elbe. If we must have filler material, movie parodies are seldom a bad idea. Know your target audience, Academy. More of this, please.

Other production touches were hit-and-miss throughout the night, ranging from baffling (that Stacey Dash cameo???) to brilliant. I gotta say, that sound editing package was both instructive and awesome. This is exactly the sort of thing that was missing during the Zadan/Meron years (their title cards were pretty and all, but did nothing to highlight the achievements they were supposed to be honouring). This was easily the coolest thing the producers threw together for this show.